Peter William Likins (born July 4, 1936) [1] is a retired American professor and academic. He was president of Lehigh University from 1982 to 1997 and the University of Arizona from 1997 until his retirement in summer 2006. [2] [3]
Likins graduated from Santa Cruz High School in 1953, where he was captain of the wrestling team and co-captain of the football team. [4] He attended Stanford University as an undergraduate, studying civil engineering and became a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. [5] He earned a master's from MIT and a PhD from Stanford. [6]
He was a faculty member at UCLA from 1964 until 1976. [7] Likins was the dean of Columbia's engineering school from 1976 to 1980 and provost of the university for professional schools from 1980 to 1981. [8] [9]
He was president of Lehigh University from 1982 to 1997. [10] [11] Likins was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1984) for contributions to spacecraft dynamics and control, and for leadership in engineering education through teaching, research, writing, and academic administration.[ citation needed ] While serving as President of Lehigh, first year student Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered. After the tragedy, Likins worked with Clery's parents and the United States Congress to pass the Clery Act. [12]
At both Columbia and Lehigh, Likins was also professor of engineering.
He then served as president of the University of Arizona from 1997 until his retirement in summer 2006. [2] [3] During the last semester of his presidency, a wire from his pacemaker poked a hole in his heart, causing him to nearly faint during an emergency drill being conducted on campus at the time. He underwent open heart surgery soon thereafter. Under different conditions emergency medical personnel might not have been able to respond in time to save him. [13]
The University of California, Santa Cruz is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the main campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. As of Fall 2023, its ten residential colleges enroll some 17,812 undergraduate and 1,952 graduate students. Satellite facilities in other Santa Cruz locations include the Coastal Science Campus and the Westside Research Park and the Silicon Valley Center in Santa Clara, along with administrative control of the Lick Observatory near San Jose in the Diablo Range and the Keck Observatory near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
The University of Arizona is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. The University of Arizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. As of Fall 2023, the university enrolled 53,187 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson along with the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law.
Lehigh University (LU) is a private research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer and was initially affiliated with the Episcopal Church. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been coeducational since the 1971–72 academic year. As of 2019, the university had 5,047 undergraduate students and 1,802 graduate students.
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Gerhard Casper is a political scientist who is a former president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000, a former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School from 1979 to 1987, and a former provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. Casper was president of the American Academy in Berlin from July 2015 through July 2016; from August 2019 to January 24, 2020, he served as the institution's trustee-in-residence.
Thomas Kailath is an Indian born American electrical engineer, information theorist, control engineer, entrepreneur and the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering emeritus at Stanford University. Professor Kailath has authored several books, including the well-known book Linear Systems, which ranks as one of the most referenced books in the field of linear systems.
James Donald Meindl was director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and the Marcus Nanotechnology Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. He won the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor "for pioneering contributions to microelectronics, including low power, biomedical, physical limits and on-chip interconnect networks.”
Alice Petry Gast is an American researcher, was the 16th president of Imperial College London, and sits on the board of directors of Chevron. Gast was named one of the top 100 "Modern Era" engineers in the US under the category of "Leadership" by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
William Drea "Bro" Adams is an American educator and advocate for the humanities. He was the tenth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2014 to 2017. He served as the 14th President of Bucknell University from 1995 to 2000, and as the 19th President of Colby College from 2000 to 2014.
Peter Meong Rhee is an American surgeon, medical professor, and military veteran. During his 24 years in the United States Navy, Rhee served as a battlefield casualty physician in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Norman Edward Shumway was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was the 67th president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery and the first to perform an adult human to human heart transplantation in the United States.
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Arizona International College (AIC) was an American liberal arts college in Tucson, Arizona, that existed from 1996–2005.
Arthur Earl Humphrey is an American chemical engineer. Humphrey was born in Moscow, Idaho and attended the University of Idaho, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Lehigh University and Pennsylvania State University after retiring from Lehigh.
The murder of Jeanne Clery occurred at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on April 5, 1986. Clery, who was a freshman at the time of her death, was raped and killed in her dormitory on the Lehigh University campus. Clery's parents believed the university failed to share vital information with its students regarding campus safety, and launched a campaign for legislative reform for several years following their daughter's death.
Robert Clayton Robbins, known professionally as Robert C. Robbins or R.C. Robbins, is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and the 22nd president of The University of Arizona, who will be succeeded by Suresh Garimella in 2024. In the spring of 2023, the Faculty Senate at the University of Arizona gave R.C. Robbins a vote of “no confidence” due, in part, to the university leadership’s inaction regarding a violent student who would go on to fatally shoot a professor in October of 2022. He received a pay raise in October of 2023 from the Arizona Board of Regents. This was followed by his decision in December 2023 to enact hiring freezes, eliminate the Salary Increase Program and Pay Structure Increase for staff and faculty and Tuition Guarantee Program for students, and restrict purchasing by university departments due to the University of Arizona’s poor financial position. Previously, he was the president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, from 2012 to 2017.
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Geoffrey C. Gurtner is an American microsurgeon. As of January 2022, he is the Chair of Surgery, Professor of Surgery and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson. He was previously Professor of Surgery and Inaugural Vice Chairman of Surgery for Innovation at Stanford University School of Medicine.